We’re excited to share this news with you first, because now the first wave of Premium+ subscribers will be able to try out the closed alpha version of our upcoming Second Life iOS/Android app (without even having to sign an NDA). We’ve revealed the real life of a long-time SLer TavishBrock resident who helped manage Rosehaven Estates.
First, here’s what the iOS app looks like installed on TavishBrock’s iPad (right): Below are some more screenshots taken directly from my iOS device. And before we go any further, keep in mind that this is still a running app. closed alphaSo expect to see a lot of fixes and additions to the final product over the next year.
Now let’s take a look at Tavish’s full assessment of the current iOS build.
this is very Early in the development process and everything I write, especially my observations about shortcomings, should be read with this in mind. It’s so unfinished that I literally have no complaints, just observations.
I’m running it on the following devices:
- 2018 11-inch iPad Pro (with keyboard)
- iphone 15 pro
- M3 Max 14-inch MacBook Pro
First Impressions:
This is good! Smooth and fast. It’s really surprisingly fast for an iPad considering its age.
this is very Limited functionality is expected. I’d like to focus on getting a few features working properly before adding more features.
Local chat works well. I can’t start a group chat. The feature was in the client, but chat did not work in groups.
My avatar seems a little strange. My little avatar is severely misshapen.
The draw distance seems to be short.
Using the trackpad to move around the computer is a bit awkward, but that’s to be expected and having swipe gestures enabled for dragging really helps. The window cannot be resized.
Having separate conversation and movement modes may feel odd at first, but soon becomes more natural. Any old school Unix user using vi (not vim) will know what I mean.
Crashes do happen, but not as often as you might expect.
On iDevices (except Mac), apps quit very quickly when in the background.
Camera tracking is required. It doesn’t always follow the avatar, or fast enough. I haven’t played around with the settings to see if there are any adjustments for it.
As Mac users, this project gives us hope that there might be a way to get a native client that doesn’t involve Apple’s horrible, deprecated OpenGL implementation, especially since PBR has a very negative impact on Mac viewer performance. It gives me hope that I can get clients.
tl;dr: This is really promising as a mobile client!
Click here to visit Estates to compare and contrast iPad screenshots with PC/Mac clients. Regarding this, Tabish added, “It’s actually not easy to get great landscape photos on mobile viewers. The distance to draw objects is quite short, and sometimes textures don’t load properly.” (This also applies while playing).”
The way I see it, the iOS app already provides a “good enough” Second Life experience that can be enjoyed anywhere over Wi-Fi, and as Tavish said, it’s still early days. My personal hope is that the user interface/user experience will be a significant departure from the existing version. Even if this means that some options and content are not fully accessible. But next year I will talk more about UI/UX.
If you want to experience Second Life on your mobile soon, you’ll need to sign up for a Premium+ Plus account.
Big thanks to TavishBrock Resident for the review and screenshots!
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